Cooking it up on slumber prone days - Coconut rice and potato stew
June 27, 2008
Most of the times, the last thing I want to do on a Sunday is to cook…. …..and my mantra for cooking is mostly to just make it up as I go, tasting like a maniac….and majorly changing everything to suit my mood and the pantry stock for the day/week…..i am a slave to easy and quick cooking…..and can’t believe it when anyone tells me they spend hours in the kitchen…..well to each his own I guess……
While I am terrified of using too many packaged products….…we do indulge in our quota of instant noodles from time to time….and I do know a life saver in a tetrapack or vaccum sealed when I see one….i like to stock frozen peas and now my current hot favourite is potato flakes…..but other than that, most of the stuff I make is from fresh ingredients……coconut milk being another exception…..i always avoided like the plague recipes which called for coconut milk because there was no way I saw myself extracting it….but miracles sometimes come packaged in a tetrapack!! When I first found this on supermarket shelves, I couldn’t stop myself from buying a couple, reaching home to open a carton and slurp it up….on the sly of course!! Then I found that coconut milk can uplift the most sorry preparations….sweet and savoury….and take it up to the level of almost always receiving praise….it is rich, creamy and has me completely under its spell……a word of caution though…it is extremely high in fat and cholesterol and so after the initial euphoria, I use it sparingly, but happily nonetheless!!
Coconut rice and potato stew was a Sunday lunch on a day when I wanted to spend as less time as possible in the kitchen and yet not compromise on taste and flavour…… a few minutes of prep work, another few minutes frying and stirring and this meal practically cooks itself…..this is going off to celebrate AFAM: this month we celebrate coconut……A Fruit A Month, the monthly event Started by Maheswari of Beyond The Usual,that puts spotlight on a fruit comes to Suganya’s Tasty Palettes. This is also off to EasyCrafts of Simple Indian cooking who is hosting Mixed rice varieties event.
While I find it most convenient and quick to make pulavs and biryani other than the dum ka biryani in a pressure cooker or pressure pan, there was a time when any rice dish i cooked in a pressure cooker would resemble a goop good enough to stick a shoe sole…..sig came to my rescue….she talks of switching the heat off after one whistle for a perfectly cooked non mushy grain of rice. this works like magic!! The build up of pressure, even after being turned off is sufficient to cook the rice fully without turning it into a paste….however please be warned that this works only when the rice is being cooked directly in the pressure cooker and not placed in another vessel……
